Hays County's Transformation Gives Democrats Hope in Hill Country House District
Erin Zwiener bobs up and down, soothing her three-month old infant strapped to her chest, as she makes her pitch to voters in a Buda subdivision. “When I was a public school kid, the state paid 60 percent of my education. Now, it’s closer to 38 percent,” she says. “That leaves school districts with two options: Cut services or raise taxes. Here in Hays [Consolidated ISD], they’re doing both.”
A local activist who helped launch an Indivisible chapter in Hays County, Zwiener got fed up with her state representative, Republican Jason Isaac, and decided to challenge him. Running as a common-sense progressive in the primary, Zwiener earned the endorsement of the Bernie Sanders-aligned Our Revolution Texas. She trailed Rebecca Bell-Metereau, a Democratic candidate who has run in several elections, by 15 percentage points in the March primary. But Zwiener pulled off a major upset in the runoff, coming from behind to win by fewer than 200 votes.
House District 45 encompasses all of Hays and Blanco counties, which have divergent political profiles. Hays is a swelling suburban county that includes Buda, Kyle, San Marcos and Texas State University. Sparkling new subdivisions run up against rolling farmland along I-35. As more and more people move out from Austin, the county is trending Democratic. All told, the district has gained 13,000 new voters since 2016, according to the Texas House Democratic Campaign Committee.
To the west in the Hill Country, Blanco County remains deep red — Trump won with nearly 75 percent of the vote. But Beto O’Rourke has drawn big crowds to campaign stops in the area, giving Democrats hope.
Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/hays-countys-transformation-gives-democrats-hope-in-hill-country-house-district/
